Fire and Ice
by AnnCarter
Summary: In his heart there is only fire now, cold fire made of ice. It's the only way he can stop himself from feeling. Set in the end of 3X13, "Last of the Time Lords".


**AN:** One of the things I love about the Doctor is that he keeps running from pain. You can see that in his eyes every time he sees the Daleks or loses someone he cares about. Everything he does, all his smiles and everything, it's all to hide the pain and run away from it. It's very relatable, at least to me.

_All rights for Doctor Who are the BBC's. I own nothing._

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As he walked away from the burning pile of wood, the Doctor felt nothing. There was no pain in his eyes or heart, just coldness. Cold fire burning in his heart, ready to burst if needed. He knew anyone else, human or non-human, would cry or scream or feel any sort of pain, but not him. Not the Doctor, and not now.

He felt pain burning in his soul, eating through his heart, as the Master died in his arms. He felt his heart being consumed by that horrible fire, felt again the loss of each and every one of his people. He felt it and screamed in pain, unable to ignore the feeling he's been running from for so long. For a moment there he thought she should have shot him as well, should have brought peace to him too. He wanted her to shoot him. Anything for not feeling that pain again.

But as he fixed the wood in its place and put the Master's dead body over it, he felt nothing. He couldn't feel a single emotion as he started the fire and watched the body of the only Time Lord but him burning. He couldn't cry or scream, simply because his heart was completely empty except for that cold fire, that storm, that rage of his that filled his heart for years now.

He knew to others it sometimes seemed as though he couldn't feel. Joan, Donna, even Martha, who's accompanied him for so long now, they all thought he was unable to feel human emotions. Despite the hugs and the smiles and the excitement, they thought there was no actual feeling underneath, in his heart. They thought he was unable to feel love. Unable to feel compassion. Unable to feel pain.

But the truth was he didn't want to feel. He'd felt so much during his nine-hundred years of life. He fell in love. He was happy. He held his first child and his heart filled with all those wonderful, happy emotions humans kept talking about. He even felt scared or guilty sometimes. But the strongest thing he had ever felt, and the one emotion he always ran away from, was pain.

"I know the feeling," He told the doctor when he visited World War Two, after he told him he was once a father and a grandfather, but not anymore. He was a husband once, a father, a grandfather. He had friends and others of his kind he cared for. He was something else before the Time War ended and he lost everyone he ever loved, but not anymore. Because now the pain was haunting him, and he had no choice but the run.

So he ran. He hid behind humor, cynicism, childlike excitement and slight rudeness. He enjoyed every new thing he'd seen and every new person he'd met. He truly loved travelling in time and space. But at the same time, deep inside his mind, he knew it was all to just run away. Run away from the pain and the guilt he felt and hid every time he'd seen the Daleks. The only one he ever showed it to was now gone as well, another disappearance he could barely handle if he'd just thought of that.

Watching the Master dying was the end of it. It was the one thing that he couldn't hide away. The one thing he couldn't run away from. The one thing that broke the dam and enabled his emotions to flood him. And as he sat there on the floor, holding the Time Lord's body, and screamed, he knew he could no longer run away the way he used to do.

So he stopped his heart. He could still enjoy. He could still feel compassion. He could still feel excited. He still wanted to help people and prevent horrible things from happening. But at the same time, he could also feel nothing. After all the pain he's been through, he made his heart into ice, into stone, so he could no lover feel all those things he did not want to feel. And the same way he couldn't fall in love again after Rose, he could no longer feel pain, at least not for the time being. In his heart he now had only that freezing fire that he knew since forever.


End file.
